Drilling project in the National Petroleum Reserve moving forward
The Willow Project, initially proposed by ConocoPhillips, is a massive oil drill project on the northern slope of Alaska. The area in which they wish to drill is located in the National Petroleum Reserve. The Bureau of Land Management estimates that the project could produce around 576 million barrels of oil in 30 years.
Close to a million people have signed a petition to try and stop the Willow Project. They have deemed that if the Willow Project were to be approved the climate change crisis would worsen.
“We must all do everything in our power to organize and communicate with Mr. Biden to stop the Willow Project,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D) said on the House Floor. “We are living in a climate catastrophe. We have one human race; we have one planet, and we have people organizing across the country to make sure the Willow Project doesn’t happen and to make sure we invest in the clean, green, renewable energy that is going to save the human race and save the planet. Mr. President, it is young people that organized across this country to help you get into office. Their number one issue is climate change.”
On March 13, The Biden administration approved the project. After all the petitions to stop this project for the greater health of our planet, the Biden administration was unable to stop it completely. They knew that the courts wouldn’t have allowed them to completely reject the idea or drastically reduce the project. If they would’ve tried to act on any of these plans they would’ve faced steep fines, in addition to ConocoPhillips’ legal action.
The Biden administration was able to reduce the drill pads from five to three. Three of these pads will allow them to drill about 90% of the oil that they were originally pursuing.
The reason this project is bad for the planet is because it has been estimated that 239 million metric tons of carbon dioxide would be released into the atmosphere by burning the oil in the project’s 30-year lifespan. This amount of oil would absolutely destroy the atmosphere and lower our chances to save this planet so drastically that it will be very hard to come back from.
